WMDE Technical Wishes/Line Numbering

This page is for documenting the development progress, research and discussions about the project "Line numbering for the wikitext editor". Comments and questions are welcome on the talk page!

Description

As of June 2018, Syntax highlighting uses color to make it easier to visually separate article text from the code for links, references and templates, when editing wikitext. Syntax highlighting mode can be turned on and off in the editing toolbar with the highlighter icon. The CodeMirror software behind it is also the basis for the planned highlighting of matching brackets.

CodeMirror also provides the simple ability to display line numbering. This brings two main benefits - especially helpful for templates, but also applicable to other types of pages:

• It makes it easier to refer to a line in discussions
• It shows where line break are at a glance

The Technical Wishes team therefore plans to enable line numbering when syntax highlighting is turned on.

Implementation

If syntax highlighting is enabled in the editor, a gray bar with line numbering is displayed on the left edge of the editor. If syntax highlighting is disabled, then line numbering will also be disabled.

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Status and roadmap

• April 13-15, 2021: planned deployment on all wikis for the template namespace
• Deployment on more namespaces is planned for the near future

Links

• Phabricator: T267911